Dutch scientists have found a way to see through objects

Scientists at the University of Twente in the Netherlands have found a way to see through opaque barriers, Nature reports. This is done by recording wavelengths from visible light, which can pass through solid material like paint or skin. Researchers are now working on methods to reassemble scattered light that has passed through opaque barriers to create a useable image on the other side. In 2007, scientists Allard Mosk and Ivo Vellekoop attempted to shine a beam of visible light through a glass slide covered with white paint and focus the beam on the other side. They didn’t expect it to work — but it did. “I really just wanted to try this because it had never been done before,” Mosk said. Mosk and his team used a “spatial light modulator” to control the transmission of different parts of a light beam as it passed through the painted glass slide. A detector on the other side of the slide picked up light transmissions and a computer monitored wavelengths picked up by the detector.